Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at St. Andrew’s Medical Practice on 23 June 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• The practice had strong clinical leadership, managerial leadership and governance arrangements. For example, a

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example, one of the partner GPs developed a cross borough, multi-professional learning group which was often hosted at the practice. The group was comprised of local GPs, secondary care consultants, pharmacists, social workers, nurses and health care support workers.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive. For example, all of the practice’s national patient survey respondents (113 patients) scored the nursing team at 90% or more regarding all aspects of care and treatment. For example, 100% fedback that they had confidence in the last nurse they saw and 92% fed back that they felt involved in decisions about their care and treatment. The nursing team spoke positively about how educating and involving patients in their care and treatment decisions had positively impacted on patient outcomes in areas such as weight management and blood pressure management.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs. For example, the practice routinely undertook outreach with local community groups which had enabled it to host several drop-in and referral based services covering dementia support, social services and carer support.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group. For example, the practice had acted on a Patient Participation Group (PPG) group suggestion for a mobile telephone contact number for priority patients/carers to contact the practice/named GP in an emergency.

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they were managed; and also made improvements as a result.

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice provided a mobile telephone number to enable priority patients to contact the practice/named GP in an emergency. This was seen as particularly important for non-verbal patients as it allowed messages to be texted to the practice. the enhanced by promptlysotherefore

• One of the partner GPs developed a cross borough multi-professional collaborative learning group hosted at the practice. The group was comprised of local GPs, hospital consultants, pharmacists, social workers, nurses and health care support workers. Clinicians from St Andrew’s Medical practice spoke positively about how the learning group broadened clinical knowledge and positively impacted on care and treatment in areas such as heart disease management.

However there were areas of practice where the provider should make improvements:

• Consider documenting its five year strategy so as to further promote its community outreach approach amongst local people and third sector stakeholders.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice